Present moment – Page 428

How nature heals

September 20, 2010September 21, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

These beautiful autumn days touch the heart and the spirit. Simply being out in nature can heal and restore us, without the need for words or explanations or ideas.

We can learn from it as to how to be with someone who is going through a time of difficulty:

I was sad one day and went for a walk; I sat in a field.

A rabbit noticed my sadness and came near

It often does not take more than that to help at times –

to just be close to creatures who are so full of knowing

so full of love, that they don’t

chat

they just gaze with their marvellous understanding.

John of the Cross

Stop inviting the future

September 19, 2010September 21, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Don’t prolong the past,

don’t invite the future,

don’t be deceived by appearances,

just dwell in present awareness.

Patrul Rinpoche

Even good and worthwhile, things have the capacity to pull us away from what we should be doing at this moment, which may seem less exciting in comparison. We do not need to rush the future, just do what is in front of us today. The different wisdom traditions often tell stories about this. The famous Zen proverb – Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water – can help us be in the moment and put our whole selves into whatever we are doing. In the tradition of the Church we are often encouraged to remember the example of those who performed their everyday duties with great love, touching the loves of those around them. Sometimes we can get too focused on the special moments, when it is the ordinary things like doing paperwork or making the lunch that count. Or we get deceived by the “appearance” and the imagining of the future in our minds, and are blinded to the actual reality of the task in front of us. As Therese of Lisieux reminds us, Nothing is small in the eyes of God. Do all that you do with love. In the end, it is just another way of reminding us that the present moment is the key to our happiness and our health. We have no place special to go. Happiness is right in front of us.

Me, a Saint?

September 19, 2010September 21, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The Pope is in England for the start of the process of making John Henry Newman a “saint”. Newman was a good man and a very fine thinker, personalifying a gentle, open-minded search for truth. The school I went to in Ireland, founded in 1867, was influenced by his principles of education. Most wisdom traditions hold up examples of people wo can act as an encouragement to us, such as the Bodhisattvas in the Buddhist tradition or the Saints in the Catholic and Orthodox history. Sometimes, however, the focus is on their extraordinary deeds which can lead us into thinking that full contentment is only to be found there. In this light, I like this quote from Thomas Merton:

For me to be a saint means to be myself.

Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is, in fact,

the problem of finding our who I am and discovering my true self.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Why we miss real understanding

September 13, 2010September 13, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

When time is reduced to linear progress,

it is emptied of presence.

John O’Donoghue

It’s not out there

September 6, 2010September 6, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

We have a habit of looking in the wrong place for contentment. We tend to look outside ourselves, seeing others’ lives and other places as possessing a greater level of happiness than we currently possess. This often leads us to instinctively compare, provoking a movement within us that happens in a flash and then prompts the telling of a story about ourselves and about life, which leads to our mood going down. As I have written before, we end up comparing our present self to a better self, or to the ideal portrayal of lives which we find in society or which our insecurities about ourselves have generated. We find that a lot of our anxieties arise because we are trying to match up to what we think our life “should” be like, or what others portray as being happy.

It is easy to fall into this trap when we travel. We see a different from of life, maybe faster and more “exciting” than our own, or houses situated in a better location, or places of quiet that seem much more peaceful than where we live. So we lean towards those things, or we leave ourselves, not realizing that true contentment is found within. We get caught in idealized views of what is possible for ourselves and travel far in our minds and in our spirits from where we actually are. And this often means we end up thinking that something must be wrong with our lives or with us.

Meditation practice is a training in learning to stay, staying with ourselves, not running outside ourselves after every passing stimulus about things which will pass away. It helps us to not attach too much solidity to these comparing thoughts, letting them pass through our minds without hooking on to them. We realize that they do not bring the contentment they seem to suggest. It helps us seek real happiness within, where we already are.

The primary focus of this path of choosing wisely…is learning to stay present. Pausing very briefly, frequently throughout the day, is an almost effortless way to do this. For just a few seconds we can be right here. Meditation is another way to train in learning to stay or…learning to come back, to return to the present over and over again.

Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap